Montgomery still banking on Phillies' core

Philadelphia Phillies' Carlos Ruiz, right, celebrates with Chase Utley and Ryan Howard after Ruiz's three-run home run in the third inning of a baseball game against the Washington Nationals, Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2012, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum)

There are 162 scheduled games left in an era of Phillies baseball that will be remembered on walls of fame in their next six ballparks. One way or another, it is going to end David Montgomery’s way. One way or another, it is going to end with them, all of them. The fans know who they are. They have all of their bobbleheads.

Montgomery is the Phillies’ president and makes all of the franchise-defining seasons. He was around for one championship and its surrounding era of historic greatness, and he was in charge of the encore, a generation later. He knows how it works. And he believes that the Phillies are not popular just because they customarily win, nor because they nailed it with their new ballpark, nor because the fans have grown attached to what once was a championship nucleus. He believes the franchise has been on standing-room red-alert since 2007 for all of those reasons. All.

The ballpark drew fans. The players won games. The fans returned to watch those same players try to win again. Three strikes, he should pardon the expression.

“They like this team,” Montgomery said during the last season. “They like these players.”

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They liked Jim Bunning, too, but he’s not pitching Opening Day. Yet somewhere in Montgomery’s gut, there has been the fear that smashing the nucleus of a team that 2.6 million people once smothered in confetti would be to risk smashing much more.

Montgomery is not so committed to the roster that he would encourage his G.M. to spend a buck-26 for Jayson Werth, or to keep the mistake-prone Shane Victorino forever, or to prevent Pat Burrell from leaking away later in his career. Even Brad Lidge, deserving of a ballpark statue, was allowed to leave. But at this time last year, the Phillies were sharply criticized for stashing another $33 million in Jimmy Rollins’ shirt pocket. Later, they signed Cole Hamels, long-term, for $144 million, with Ruben Amaro appearing satisfied, if hardly prepared to party. Both investments, it was said, were pushed hard by Montgomery. Nor were they frivolous. Rollins enjoyed a bounce-back season, belting 23 home runs. Hamels, an irreplaceable left-handed ace, would have received at least that much in free agency. So it wasn’t the money. It was, though, the policy; Montgomery will play this hand and he will not hesitate.

But that invites the question at the onset of the Grapefruit League: Are the Phillies bluffing … or do they still have the nut hand? Are they trying to fool another 3.5 million fans into believing that Ryan Howard, Chase Utley, Rollins, Hamels and, eventually, the to-be-suspended Carlos Ruiz can still form a championship foundation, requiring only some adornments --- a new setup man, a couple of guys named Young, Darin Ruf and his alternate-uniform cap in the caucus stage of the N.L. Rookie of the Year ring? Or is that foundation solid, healthy for the first time in a while, able to play back only to 2011, when the Phillies won 102 times?

Either way, that is Montgomery’s play. The alternative would have been to cash in on that 2008 championship and 2009 World Series experience, shepherding those players out the left field gate while waving another, hungrier group in from right. By now, that initiative might have been ready to pay off. The Phils, though, were terrified to part with a core that had been responsible for souvenir sales that could have been measured in 18-wheeler loads.

Utley is 34 and unsigned for 2014. Howard, 31, is committed only through 2016. Ruiz, facing a suspension for his choice of self-improvement products, is 34 and on his final contact year. Rollins is 34, with two years left on his late-career pact. Then there is Charlie Manuel, 69. He will spend his final season under contract racing Ryne Sandberg every night for the best parking spot in the company lot.

So it’s all going to be over, soon. One hunch is that it should have been over already, and that the Phillies should have sold high, not settled for an era winding down. But that’s not Dave Montgomery’s hunch though. That’s not his hunch at all.